madness in his mind, it would have been most remarkable; look on him in his mother's closet, or listen to his dying words, and then ask if there was any disease of madness in that soul.

BOSWELL (1821)

(The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare, 1821, vol. vii, p. 536.)—That the madness of Hamlet is not altogether feigned is, I think, entirely without foundation. The sentiments which fall from him in his soliloquies, or in confidential communication with Horatio, evince not only a sound, but an acute and vigorous, understanding. His misfortunes, indeed, and a sense of shame for the hasty and incestuous marriage of his mother, have sunk him into a state of weakness and melancholy; but though his mind is enfeebled, it is by no means deranged. It would have been little in the manner of Shakespeare to introduce two persons in the same play whose intellects were disordered; but he has rather in this instance, as in King Lear, a second time effected what, as far as I can recollect, no other writer has even ventured to attempt,-the exhibition on the same scene of real and fictitious madness in contrast with each other. In carrying his design into execution, Hamlet feels no difficulty in imposing upon the King, whom he detests; or upon Polonius and his schoolfellows, whom he despises; but the case is very different, indeed, in his interviews with Ophelia: aware of the submissive mildness of her character, which leads her to be subject to the influence of her father and her brother, he cannot venture to entrust her with his secret. In her presence, therefore, he has not only to assume a disguise, but to restrain himself from those expressions of affection which a lover must find it most difficult to repress in the presence of his mistress. In this tumult of conflicting feelings he is led to overact his part from a fear of fall. ing below it; and thus gives an appearance of rudeness and harshness to that which is in fact a painful struggle to conceal his tenderness.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE (Blackwood's Maga. 1828)

(Essays and Marginalia. London, 1851, vol. i, p. 153.)—Let us, for a moment, put Shakespeare out of the question, and consider Hamlet as a real person, a recently deceased acquaintance. In real life it is no unusual thing to meet with characters every whit as obscure as that of the Prince of Denmark,-men seemingly accomplished for the greatest actions, clear in thought, and dauntless in deed, still meditating mighty works, and urged by all motives and occasions to the performance, whose existence is nevertheless an unperforming dream; men of noblest, warmest affections, who are perpetually wringing the hearts of those whom they love best; whose sense of rectitude is strong and wise enough to inform and govern a world, while their acts are the hapless issues of casualty and passion, and scarce to themselves appear their own. We cannot conclude that all such have seen ghosts; though the existence of ghost-seers is as certain as that of ghosts is problematical. But they will generally be found, either by a course of study and meditation too remote from the art and practice of life,-by designs too pure and perfect to be executed in earthly materials, or from imperfect glimpses of an intuition beyond the defined limits of communicable knowledge,-to have severed themselves from the common society of human feelings and opinions, and become, as it were, ghosts in the body. Such a man is Hamlet; an habitual dweller with his own thoughts.

[Page 162.] If it be asked, Is Hamlet really mad? or for what purpose does he assume madness? we reply that he assumes madness to conceal from himself and others his real distemper. Mad he certainly is not, in the sense that Lear and Ophelia are mad. Neither his sensitive organs nor the operations of his intellect are impaired. His mind is lord over itself, but it is not master of his will. The ebb and flow of his feelings are no longer obedient to calculable impulses,-he is like a star drawn by the approximation of a comet out of the range of solar influence. To be mad is not to be subject to the common laws whereby mankind are held together in community, and whatever part of man's nature is thus dissociated, is justly accounted insane. If a man see objects, or hear sounds, which others in the same situation cannot see or hear, and his mind and will assent to the illusion (for it is possible that the judgement may discredit the false intelligence which it receives from its spies), such man is properly said to be out of his senses, though his actions and conclusions, from his own peculiar perceptions, should be perfectly sane and rational. Hamlet's case is in some measure the reverse of this,-his actions and practical conclusions are not consistent with the premises in his mind and his senses. An overwhelming motive produces inertness, he is blinded with excess of light.

[Page 166.] But for wringing the kind, fond heart of sweet Ophelia with words such as man should never speak to woman, what excuse, what explanation can be offered? Love, we know, is often tyrannous and rough, and too often tortures to death the affection it would rack into confession of itself; and men have been who would tear open the softest breast, for the satisfaction of finding their own names indelibly written on the heart within. But neither love nor any other infirmity that flesh is heir to can exempt the live dissection from the condemnation of inhumanity. Such experiments are more excusable in women, whose weakness, whose very virtue, requires suspicion and strong assurance; but in man they ever indicate a foul, a feeble, and unmanly mind. I never could forgive Posthumous for laying wagers on his wife's chastity. Of all Shakespeare's jealous husbands, he is the most disagreeable.

But, surely, the brave, the noble-minded, the philosophic Hamlet could never be guilty of such cruel meanness. Nor would Shakespeare, who reverenced womanhood, have needlessly exposed Ophelia to insult if some profound heart-truth were not developed in the exhibition. One truth at least it proves,-the fatal danger of acting madness. Stammering and squinting are often caught by mimicry, and he who wilfully distorts his mind, for whatever purpose, may stamp its lineaments with irrecoverable deformity. To play the madman is hypocrisy against the devil.' Hamlet, in fact, through the whole drama, is perpetually sliding from his assumed wildness into sincere distraction. But his best excuse is to be found in the words of a poet, whom it scarce beseems me to praise, and who needs no praise of mine:

'For to be wroth with one we love

Doth work like madness in the brain.'-S. T. C.

Hamlet loved Ophelia in his happy youth, when all his thoughts were fair and sweet as she. But his father's death, his mother's frailty, have wrought sad alteration in his soul, and made the very form of woman fearful and suspected. His best affections are blighted, and Ophelia's love, that young and tender flower, escapes not the general infection. Seemed not his mother kind, faithful, innocent? And was she not married to his uncle? But after the dread interview, the fatal injunction, he is a man among whose thoughts and purposes love cannot abide. He is a being severed from human hopes and joys,-vowed and dedicated to other work than

courtship and dalliance. The spirit that ordained him an avenger, forbade him to be a lover. Yet, with an inconstancy as natural as it is unreasonable, he clings to what he has renounced, and sorely feels the reluctant repulse which Ophelia's obedience presents to his lingering addresses. Lovers, even if they have seen no ghosts, and have no uncles to slay, when circumstances oblige them to discontinue their suit, can ill endure to be anticipated in the breach. It is a sorrow that cannot bear the slightest show of unkindness. Hamlet, moreover, though a tardy, is an impatient nature, that would feel uneasy under the common process of maidenly delay. Thus perplexed and stung, he rushes into Ophelia's chamber, and, in amazed silence, makes her the confidant of his grief and distraction, the cause of which she must not know. No wonder she concludes that he is mad for her love, and enters readily into what to her appears an innocent scheme to induce him to lighten his overcharged bosom, and ask of her the peace which unasked she may not offer. She steals upon his solitude, while, weary of his unexecuted task, he argues with himself the expediency of suicide. Surprised as with a sudden light, his first words are courteous and tender, till he begins to suspect that she, too, is set on to pluck out the heart of his mystery; and then, actually maddened by his self-imposed necessity of personating madness, he discharges upon her the bitterness of blasted love, the agony of a lover's anger, as if determined to extinguish in himself the last feeling that harmonized not with his fell purpose of revengeful justice. To me, this is the most terrifically affecting scene in Shakespeare. Neither Lear nor Othello are plunged so deep in the gulf of misery.

GEORGE FARREN (1829)

(Observations on the Laws of Mortality and Disease, &c. London, 1829, p. 12.) -It is not maintained in this essay that Hamlet was uniformly deranged, or that his malady disqualified him altogether for the exercise of his reason, but that he was liable to paroxysms of mental disorder. The death of his father, the marriage of his mother, and the consequent overthrow of his royal hopes, all these suddenly acting on a mind predisposed to gayety and to youthful follies, impart a tinge of melancholy to it, which speedily but imperceptibly produces an instability of intellect; and, by brooding over the Ghost's commandment, he nourishes a malady which at first he intended merely to feign. All Hamlet's words and actions before he resolves to feign insanity may be considered as those of a free agent, and it is by these that we are to decide whether or not he has from the start a perfectly healthy mind. Now, before he had any suspicion of his father's murder, and of course before he intends to feign insanity, we find him deliberating on suicide, and intolerant of life, -sure indications of mental disease. His mind was therefore affected from the first, and it is to be further noted, that whenever Hamlet is alone the true state of his mind reveals itself in melancholy soliloquies; furthermore, FARREN asks, whether the assumption of the rôle of a madman be not, under the circumstances, a clear act of insanity? So far from aiding his design, it was the very way to thwart it, as, in fact, it did. Madness,' says Claudius, in great ones must not unwatched go.' Hamlet's contumelious sarcasm' in reference to the dead body of Polonius, and the language of defiance' that he hurls' at the King, must force the conclusion that he was a senseless and abandoned miscreant, if charity and a nicer estimate did not urge us to the commiseration of a masterless infirmity.' Again [p. 25]: If Hamlet be considered as not really mad, but merely feigning, his unmanly outrage on Laertes

at the grave of Ophelia, and the despicable lie he utters by way of apology in the presence of the King, whom he detests, must stamp him as the most cruel, senseless, and cowardly miscreant that ever disgraced the human form.' FARREN cites Dr MASON GOOD'S Study of Medicine, where, in treating of Ephronia melancholia, it is stated that: the disease shows itself sometimes suddenly, but more generally by slow and imperceptible degrees. There is a desire of doing well, but the will is wayward and unsteady, and produces an inability of firmly pursuing any laudable exertion, or even purpose. Melancholia Attonita, the First Variety, most commonly commences with this character, and creeps on so gradually that it is for some time mistaken for a mere attack of hypochondrism, or lowness of spirits, till the mental alienation is at length decided by the wildness of the patient's eyes, &c. The first stage of this disease is thus admirably expressed by Hamlet: "I have of late, but wherefore I know not, Lost all my mirth," &c. Grief (and particularly the loss of friends) have frequently produced it.'. . . . ‘The unhappy individuals are at the same time not only sensible of what they do or say, but occasionally sensible of its being wrong, and will express their sorrow for it immediately afterwards, and say they will not do so again.'-Vol. iii, p. 86. Hamlet's momentary regret,' adds FARREN, 'for having killed Polonius, the expression of his sorrow that to Laertes he did forget himself, and his more explicit declaration of repentance before the King, are striking instances of the correctness of the medical opinions of Dr Good.' It may not be unimportant to point attention to the fact that feigning madness is a theory with many persons subject to mental aberrations.'

....

FARREN devotes much attention to the inconsistencies in Hamlet's character and expressions, and finds therein proofs of mental disease: How can that man be sane who is deterred from suicide by God's canon 'gainst self-slaughter, and yet shortly afterwards so forget this canon, which can only be that which says: Thou shalt do no murder," as to meditate a murder of the most fiendish kind, where soul as well as body of the victim is to be killed? What sound mind would believe that the Almighty had fixed his canon 'gainst self-slaughter and not against murder? Will it be believed that the studious and virtuous Prince, who in the First Act con sidered this world as an unweeded garden, and looked to other realms for a more blissful state of being, but was deterred from seeking them by his steady belief in the revelation which awards punishment for those who shall be guilty of selfslaughter, could be so entirely divested of his religious impressions, and, indeed, of his philosophy, as to utter, in the Third Act, a soliloquy in which his very existence in a future state is made a subject of doubt? Will it find belief, that in two Acts such a change in the mind of man could be wrought without supervening malady to effect the change?' The belief is forced upon us that the poet intended to mark the growth of Hamlet's mental disorder' by 'contrasting the states of his thoughts in the two soliloquies.' Not only is the defective logic which FARREN finds in the soliloquy, To be, or not to be,' an additional proof of Hamlet's insanity, but also the confusion of his metaphors: It certainly would be extremely difficult to paint as a metaphor on canvas :-Enterprises of pith, taking regard of the fear of a dream, and turning their currents awry.' In the First Act Hamlet is fully impressed with a belief in a future state, and is studious, religious, and virtuous. The interview with the Ghost unsettles his reason, and his mind takes a more horrid hent, but in the Third Act he endeavors to recover his original train of thought,—and to be, if possible, his former self. THIS IS A VERY COMMON EFFORT WITH THOSE WHO HAVE SUFFERED MENTAL ABERRATIONS; and the result is the same in most cases,

the sufferer either reasons correctly on false premises, or makes erroneous deductions from correct premises,-SO IT WAS WITH HAMLET.' Finally, FARREN finds it 'difficult to imagine how the poet's intention could ever have been mistaken; as, from the first scene to the last, he seizes every occasion to prepare his audience for a display of insanity by Hamlet, and when the mental eclipse has commenced, loses no opportunity in which he can fix their belief in the nature of his malady.'

SIR HENRY HALFORD (1829)

In an Essay on Popular and Classical Illustrations of Insanity, read in June, 1829, and published in a volume of Essays, &c., in 1833 (p. 47), Sir HENRY HALFORD adopted the same test for insanity proposed by Hamlet to his mother: bring me to the test And I the matter will re-word, which madness Would gambol from ' (III, iv, 142–144), and illustrated it by several striking examples which had occurred in his own practice, serving to prove the correctness' of Shakespeare's discrimination. This volume of Essays was reviewed in an article in the Quarterly Review, from which the following extracts are taken.

QUARTERLY REVIEW (1833)

(Review of Sir Henry Halford's Essays, vol. xlix, p. 184.)—Hamlet's criterion of madness, however excellent as a mark for incoherence of intellect, will scarcely be used in detecting the more intricate forms of this Protean malady. The Prince's testimony in favor of his own perfect sanity is treated with as little ceremony by the commentators as similar words from the lips of a staring lunatic would be by the phalanx of modern mad-doctors. Some of them, however, are of opinion that the poet means to describe a mind disordered, and that the feigned madness is a part of the plot quite compatible with such a state of intellect; while others see nothing but the assumption of insanity in the inconsistencies of Hamlet. This discrepancy springs from the different notions included by different men in their definitions of madness. In fact, however, madness, like sense, admits of no adequate definition; no one set of words will include all its grades and varieties. Some of the existent definitions of insanity would let loose half the inmates of Bedlam, while others are wide enough to place nine-tenths of the world in strait-jackets. The vulgar error consists in believing the powers of the mind to be destroyed by the malady; but general disturbance of the intellect is only one form. The aberration may be confined to a few objects or trains of ideas; sometimes the feelings, passions, and even instincts of our nature may assume an undue ascendency over a mind not disjointed, but warped, urging it with resistless force to the commission of forbidden deeds, and to form the most consistent plans for their accomplishment.

[Page 186.] We have no doubt that Shakespeare intended to display in the character of Hamlet a species of mental malady, which is of daily occurrence in our own experience, and every variety of which we find accurately described by his contemporary, the author of the Anatomie of Melancholy. Suspicion and jealousy,' says Burton, are general symptoms. If two talk together, discourse, whisper, jest, he thinks presently they mean him,—de se putat omnia,—or, if they talk with him, he is ready to misconstrue every word they speak, and interpret it to the worst. Inconstant they are in all their actions; vertiginous, restless, unapt to resolve of any